Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #91: Cancer Scare, Food Preservation & Easy Tips to Get Started with Melissa Norris

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Episode #91: Cancer Scare, Food Preservation & Easy Tips to Get Started with Melissa Norris · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: I was cooking foods at home, but the base ingredients that I was cooking with, like I said, using vegetable oil to make things and and you know, Crisco um things that had hybridose corn so, you know, like that, I just I didn't know what I didn't know.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so I did a massive, I threw everything out.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: I had to completely go grocery shopping.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I realized at that time with our budget and what was available, and actually, you know, people like you guys, our work has really been paying off over the past decade because there's a lot more available to folks today, even in regular big grocery stores of some alternatives than in back then.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: But at that point, I was like, okay, we're gonna have to raise more of our food ourselves.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: We were doing some, but not to the majority we do now.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because I can't find it locally, or if I can, I can't afford it.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: So that was really our big catalyst.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then the great news is six months of cutting all of that stuff out, just going full board.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: It took me six months to taper off the medications um because they are a taper dose or you can actually trigger um some pretty severe reactions if you don't taper off of them.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: But I've never had to go back on them, have been completely healed since then, and it literally was just changing my our food.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, everybody.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're real really excited to have Melissa Norris here today.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: But uh before we have her on, let me give a shout out to the first Pacific Northwest Homesteaders Conference scheduled for June 30 to July 1, coming up here in this this year.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna be two days in uh Court Elaine, just east of Spokane, Washington.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's really exciting to see that homesteading conference come to the Pacific Northwest.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have a link on the website on the um podcast that you can get tickets for this, but we encourage folks to come.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a fantastic lineup of speakers and and a lot of information.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we'll look forward to seeing you there in the end of June.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Beyond Labels.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Stina McCullough with my co-host, Joel Salatin, our favorite farmer.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And today, Joel and I have another special guest for you.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Her name is Melissa Norris.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: She is a fifth-generation homesteader, educator, and author of two books, The Family Garden Plan and Everything Worth Preserving.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: After a cancer scare in her late 20s, Melissa turned back to her roots of homegrown and home-cooked foods, and she was able to fully heal.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: She and her husband quickly ramped up the food that they were raising on their small farm.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And while still working day jobs, they began to raise grass-fed, grass-finished beef, organic pasture-raised pork, organic pasture-raised chickens, along with over 70% of their own fruits and vegetables for an entire year.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, with Melissa's books, her podcast called Pioneering Today, her Pioneering Today Academy, social media, and her website, MelissaKnorris.com, she has helped over 1 million people every month.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: She's helped them live a healthier and homemade life with simple modern homesteading.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: She's passionate about raising food ethically and regeneratively and bringing back true local food sources into the hands of communities and families.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Melissa and her husband purchased a 40-acre farm and founded Norris Farmstead.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: They have a farm stay and they will be holding monthly classes on the farm from May through October, where they will be teaching live intimate workshops and offering direct-to-consumer food.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the program, Melissa.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Cena.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Joel.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm super excited to be here.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: I am really thrilled to have you.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Joel, as we'll go into, is already buddies with you.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is my first time meeting with you.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like already we're two peas in a pod because we both share a remarkable healing story.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And to fully heal, we we both turn to real food, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Real food, real nutrition, God's medicine and herbs.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really curious.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Can you share with us some about your healing journey?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because when people hear the word cancer, it elicits fear, right?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because in our culture, cancer is a death sentence.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: It is not reversible.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: They help you manage symptoms while the cancer takes over the body and you eventually succumb to it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: That was not the case in your in your situation.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: How did you go about after you had the diagnosis?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: What happened in your mind that instead of following the traditional medical establishment's approach?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: What happened to say, I'm not going to do that?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go this natural route and I'm going to trust that I'm going to be fully healed.
• 5:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I want to be really clear.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: I did not actually have cancer.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I had precancerous and some different symptoms.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll go into that just a little bit because I don't, I don't want any, I don't want uh anybody to hear that and think that I actually had cancer because I didn't.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what happened is in my late 20s, I had my upper esophagus and or excuse me, my upper stomach and esophagus biopsied for cancer because I had um GERD and stomach ulcers at such a severity level that they assumed that it was cancer.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: And when they went in with the endoscope, there was so much erosion that they're like, we need to biopsy these two spots.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: So admit when I woke up, they said we did a biopsy in two spots when they were just supposed to go in and do an endoscope because they ended up by what they they found.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: So when we got the results back, it was not cancer, it was benign.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: However, there was a lot of cellular change that was beginning to happen, which is usually your precursor once those cells begin to change uh to cancer.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: So for clarification there.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't actually really believe in luck.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: I believe in God's in God's providence in his hand.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so the specialist that I happened to get, we live really rurally, so even our specialists have to come in.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so he came into our area two days a month.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I happened to get him.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: And my appointment was on the day that he was in our area.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: And he was just really blunt.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: He said, You have to get off of these prescription medications that you're on.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I was on conventional prescription medications.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: I was a pharmacy tech for 18 years prior to and in conjunction with doing this.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I was taking them up to six times a day at maximum doses, but they weren't doing anything because I was still having all of this erosion and issues.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, I really don't know why your doctor has allowed you to be on these that long at these doses, but you need to come off of them because if you don't, the next time you're sitting back here in my office, you're probably going to have a cancer diagnosis.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: So at 29, I had my husband and two kids at home.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's kind of like, oh my gosh.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, I was like, well, I've done everything conventional medicine says.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: I still can barely function and I'm having all of these issues.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like I don't know what to do.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry to interrupt, Melissa, but to be clear for our listeners, it's not clear to me.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, don't want to get too prying, but but the issues were ulcers, ulcers and and esophagus uh abrasion of some sort.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I'd had so much stomach acid for so long that I had active ulcers, and the acid was coming up and was actually beginning to eat away at my esophagus, basically.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it sounded like if you've ever had heartburn before, you're kind of like, well, that's not, you know, you're like, well, you know, that's just heartburn.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: But at the levels I was having it, like I was like size two pants were falling off me.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like I couldn't eat, didn't matter what I ate.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like it was just it was, it was pretty severe.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so he said, You've got to figure it out by the food you eat.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, well, how do I, you know, how do you do this?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: So he gave me this big stack of papers.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I still remember because we live very rurally.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I had an hour's drive home, and this stack of papers is sitting in in the car seat beside me, and I'm driving home and I'm looking at it, and I knew that I was at this very defining moment, like, okay, you either figure this out or you're not gonna be here to watch these babies grow up and to dance at their weddings and be at their graduations.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was a huge motivator.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I I came home and this was um, you know, this was like 2010.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we're talking like 13, you know, about 13 years ago.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I just started diving into the internet on dial up, really slow connection.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I started learning about, you know, genetically modified foods and what high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils like Crisco.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: And even though I had been cooking from scratch at home, we live so far out, there is no delivery still.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was cooking foods at home, but the base ingredients that I was cooking with, like I said, using vegetable oil to make things and and you know, Crisco, um, things that had high fructose corn so, you know, like that.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: I just I didn't know what I didn't know.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so I did a massive, I threw everything out.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: I had to completely go grocery shopping.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I realized at that time with our budget and what was available, and actually, you know, people like you guys, our work has really been paying off over the past decade because there's a lot more available to folks today, even in regular big grocery stores of some alternatives than in back then.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: But at that point, I was like, okay, we're gonna have to raise more of our food ourselves.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: We were doing some, but not to the majority we do now, um, because I can't find it locally, or if I can, I can't afford it.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that was really our big catalyst.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then the great news is six months of cutting all of that stuff out, just going full board.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: It took me six months to taper off the medications um because they are a taper dose or you can actually trigger um some pretty severe reactions if you don't taper off of them.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: But I've never had to go back on them, have been completely healed since then, and it literally was just changing my our food.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you Melissa?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that there was a do you think looking back that you were just overly sensitive to this stuff?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people eat like this all the time and don't have stomach ulcers.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, was there something emotionally going on more?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh or or do you think you were just you're you're just uh whatever, sensitive to this?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a great question, Joel.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: I've actually never thought about it in those degrees.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think it was a combination.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think that maybe I am a little bit more sensitive.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: I've kind of always had a little bit of a sensitive digestive system, easy, even as a really small, small child.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there was that, but I also think that part of it was lifestyle.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: So like I have never I have always been a natural intermittent faster, to be honest.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't even know what that word was back then.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: I've never been hungry in the morning for breakfast.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so I would get up and have coffee, which I now do shade grown organic coffee.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: I still have my coffee, but the good kind.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I drank diet coke, like that was my water.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if I drank water in a day, it was something.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: And that was for year ends and year out.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think coupled with then eating a lot of those ingredients, my body was just starved for real, true, regular nutrition, even though I didn't realize it.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I was actually in a state of dehydration for extended periods of time because I was drinking diet coke and coffee and nothing else, like in my teen years and really early 20s, and then started to gain just a little bit of wisdom and did bring in some water.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: But so I think it was a very prolonged set of dietary circumstances that kind of accumulated.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: It that is so remarkable to me because you know, you talked about there's lifestyle changes that you made as well, other than the diet changes.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so can you talk a little bit about that?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm assuming part of this is um, you know, spending all this time on the farm and like in the soil and with the animals, like out in nature.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of lifestyle changes did you make that you think contributed to your complete healing?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: So we had um had beef, our own beef cattle, and we always did.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_03: I was raised on or organic, grass-fed, grass-fetished beef, but quite honestly, it's because we didn't have the money to afford synthetic fertilizers.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: We couldn't afford grain.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: We could have, you know, grass grew and we could get grass hay.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but we just couldn't afford that.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: So we were like organic and natural and cool before we even knew it was a thing, which is like such a blessing now.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: Looking back, I'm like, well, hallelujah, that we couldn't afford those.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: So my husband and I um started raising beef ourselves.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: We got some, my dad helped us start our first herd, etc.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: And we always raised them our beef that way because that's the way I had grown up raising beef.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't really know that there was, I didn't know that there was a different way that people did feed predominantly grain-based things to their cattle and all of this.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't you didn't know that there were farmers wealthy enough to buy grain.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: No, I didn't.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so that part we had always done, but it was really just our our beef, you know.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: Anything else that I was buying from the store was was raised conventionally.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um we did raise a small garden, and I have always canned our you know, green beans for a year's worth.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: And and so we did do some of that, but not to this scale.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: So when we made this decision, though, of course, then we're bringing in pigs, we're bringing in chickens.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: I am we're increasing the garden size and putting all of this stuff in.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: But my husband and I both were still working our day jobs.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm still, you know, leaving at nine o'clock in the morning and would usually get home about 6:30 to 7 p.m.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: at night, Monday through Friday.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, he would work Monday through Thursday and have uh he would work four tenths and he still works his his full day job.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I only quit working at the pharmacy uh been four years ago now.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: So we did all of this while still working our day job.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: So yes, I was in the soil before work and after work and on the weekends, but I still was actually in the pharmacy.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: And now looking back, if some of it was exposure because I was the tech, so I was counting all of the pills, opening the bottles.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: There's always pharmaceutical residue.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's capsules that bust open in the big bottle.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: So you open it up, you're getting some of that in.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: There's always, you know, different dust just on your hands and in the air.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: So looking back to that, I do have to wonder if being exposed to that, even on a micro level, I'm sure had had impacts on my health journey too.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh sure, you're I mean your your skin, your skin is porous.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're yeah, I mean, there there are there are uh air aerosols, you know, that it's it's this this it's dust.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's and and you were just you were just immersed in it.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you already had a a little bit of a sensitivity, uh this would have thrown you into a into a toxic situation.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, one thing I find fascinating though, especially as I just read your bio and heard more of you how your story developed, one thing that we say when we're trying to help people reverse disease, it's manage your stress, right?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to get things off your plates because stress, even the CDC acknowledges that stress is the number one contributor to chronic and autoimmune diseases.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So as I'm reading your bio and I'm hearing about your story that you you go work, you know, full-time job, so did your husband, you've got two kids, right?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: At that time, and then you come and manage this farm and grow all your own meat and chicken and eggs and 70% of your fruits and vegetables.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, wow, she's a superhero.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I would love to be able to do that.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: But then, but it's the feeling my body got was overwhelmed, right?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how in the world did you manage that?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, great time management skills.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I give you props for that, Melissa.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like most people think of this and they're like, whoa, that's so overwhelming.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Good for her.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I could do that.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: So can you maybe talk us through the it's like so?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: How could kind of bring it down to a practical sense?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, could anybody off the street just start doing this, had your full-time job and do what you guys did?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: How taxing is it?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: If it was taxing, how did you handle that stress so it did not fuel the pre-cancerous cells you had to, you know, go into a cancerous state?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: No, that's a great question.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I will say, yes, anybody can do it because I'm not anything special, even though I do try to tell my husband all the time that I am.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's smart, he'll tell you you're special.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: He's a very smart man.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but honestly, you know, and I've heard people say this, but we all have the same 24 hours in the day, right?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's what we choose to do them with.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: However, yes, you can work yourself into overwhelm and burn out.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I did um start to burn out my thyroid and have adrenal failure in the middle of it.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: And that was um, I kind of had set in my mind, okay, we have I have a year that I'm either going to quit my day job at the pharmacy um, or we're gonna have to scale back some other stuff because we can't keep it this pace forever.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: So there's also seasons, obviously, but there's seasons in life and seasons of getting things up, up and going.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: And part of it was I truly felt it was life or death.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know that sounds dramatic, but I did.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: I felt this is life or death.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: So we either, you know, buckle down and put in some of this time now and do this, um, or I'm not gonna have the time later.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a yeah, that that is such a uh uh a wonderful response to the to the crisis because I I heard a phrase yesterday, first time I've ever heard it, uh, from a lady who here in Virginia who has started a um uh she's a doctor, and um, it's a group of doctors that have started a medical freedom organization, uh, obviously started, you know, around all the COVID regulations, but uh other things as well.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they've got actual, you know, they've actually put their lobbying to put bills in, for example, that nobody can ever be fired from a job for failing to get a jab, you know, those kinds of things.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh and she used a phrase I'd never heard before.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Right now, our culture is blanketed with fear porn, fear pornography.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And wow, that is a powerful statement.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so for you, you came to this crisis in your life, and where most people would be obsessed with with how's it gonna progress?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's the diagnosis?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and and heading down, I'll I'll use the word again so everybody can remember it, heading down the fear porn path, you took that that crisis and you looked over the horizon and said, How long does it take us?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: How how long how long is it gonna take me to get my life back?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as as as a as a almost um uh a statement that I'm already over this, my body just doesn't know it yet.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, um, you know, I listen, I'll be very, very, uh be very, very um open and transparent for a minute.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, a lot of our listeners, my mother's 99, she turned 99 in December, and she's really she's really declining.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, all of us have um have ideas about the way we'd like to go out.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're gonna go out, okay.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: The question, how are you gonna go out?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and Cena has really helped me on this a lot.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta give credit to her to to to to appreciate the power of of envisioning what you want to happen.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so as I was walking mom home last night and she's having all sorts of issues and problems, um, I'm I'm actually consciously thinking to myself, I want to die in my sleep and keep my mind all the way to the end.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think Cena would agree with me that there is a there is a benefit to having that level of of intentional consciousness about what you're doing.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you exemplified that in this situation.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so as you did that, you took all that fear porn and you planted peppers and you fed chickens, and you gathered you see what I'm saying?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, and and but but that that's an intentional that's an intentional decision that a person makes.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, talk us through that a little bit.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I love the way that you stated that, Joel.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really true.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it really it brings to mind um uh it, you know, biblically, like what are we supposed to focus our thoughts on?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: We're supposed to focus on our thoughts on things that are good, things that are true, things that are uplifting.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not saying you can manifest your future by thinking something and therefore it just becomes because of the universe, because I think that's a little bit of abuse of of God's word there.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: So there's something to that.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: There's a principle there that that he's put into us, and so I really do I that I that's what I I lay that to, but I was ra my dad was born during the Great Depression, and it didn't change their way of living even when it lended ended because they were always raised poor.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I feel really blessed.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: So my mother is 20 years younger than my father because people are going always ask, wait a minute, how does this math add up?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll just preface it with that.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um And he had me much later in life.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so I felt like I really got the benefit.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: I did not appreciate it as a teenager, I will be honest.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: But now I appreciate it.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: I had the benefit of being raised by someone a generation older and who had gone through his formative years of literally sometimes they did not have any food to eat except what they had preserved and raised and put up themselves.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes they ate beans for three meals a day that they had, you know, raised and done themselves.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, But we we never went hungry.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, now we would think like, oh my gosh, if if I had to eat beans and that's all the variety I had for every single meal, like, how horrible would that be?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not saying I want to experience that myself, to be honest.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: But he looked at life having been raised that way and still does, that you can always figure it out, that there's always a solution, you can always find a way through it, but nobody else is coming to save you.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: And that's another thing.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Fiercely independent man.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so you just knew that if something goes wrong, you're not a victim, and that there is a way out.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: It just might take you a little bit to figure it.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so I really think it was having that modeled for me really young, my whole life, and instilled in me, that that's the way you know I view life.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're just gonna, you're you're a fighter.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like we are, we're fighters, we're not victims.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter what your circumstances is, there's always a way out.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: You just have to find it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Joel, do you have I'll let you jump in?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm uh no.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're inspired.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's more than I can handle.
• 23:41
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm getting goosebumps as you it's so profound.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is so profound because it's very rare.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: I make, oh, I'm about to cheer up.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's very rare that I find somebody like-minded like you because what you just described is the mindset that you have to have to reverse the disease.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one reason why, in my experience with all the clients and friends and family member I've worked with, you can tell in the first couple minutes of talking to somebody, you can tell if they're going to be able to successfully reverse it or not.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because of the perception, it's because of the mindset, like what they truly believe.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you have that mindset.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's just a beautiful example for everyone else to hear in that you're comfortable enough to share it with everybody to model it, to give them the inspiration and the motivation, but the template behind what it actually takes.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because all of this is possible.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like reversing a disease is possible.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: You growing your own food, it is possible.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds over both of those sound completely overwhelming, but they are both possible.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it starts with this perception that yes, it might be over, might sound overwhelming, but anything is possible because I can do it, right?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: I can find the solution in any of these situations.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And go ahead, Joel.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: So so so Melissa, let's let's turn the corner here in the time we have left.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, let's turn the corner here.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: So so you made this decision.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're gonna we're gonna become as food self-sufficient as we possibly can.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm confident there was a there was a moment when you kind of had that come to Jesus moment, you know, we're gonna be as food self-sufficient as possible.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And and and you've you've arrived at, I think you said 70%, uh, which is an incredible uh amount.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, so first of all, what do you buy?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And how many hours a day does it take to do this?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I love these questions because they're so they're so practical.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so I also live in in the relatively far north.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: So we have a very short growing season for warm weather crops.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm planting Memorial Weekend, end of May.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes we get a frost mid-September.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: If we're real lucky, it happens in October.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: So during the summer months, I usually spend probably about three to four hours a week, you know, in the garden, harvesting the planting days, of course, or bigger or bigger days.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: So those are going to be a bigger chunk, but that's just one day out of the month, usually when we put in all the warm weather crops, that type of thing.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: But on average, it's about probably about four to five hours a week, but that includes the preserving, because if I'm only growing those warm weather crops and I want to eat them all year long, I have to figure out a way to preserve them so they last the entire year.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: So that is, you know, tending the garden, weeding, watering, picking, succession planting, harvesting, and then bringing them all in.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it, and I prefer to do where I can is to work.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: Most of us don't have an extra five hours laying around in a day.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like, let's be real.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes we're lucky if we can find an, you know, an extra 40 minutes.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: So what I do is, especially during the work week, and this was modeled because I had to do it when I was working off the farm.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: It was the only way that could be done.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: Is I can find 15 to 20 minutes in the morning.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: All of us can.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: There's a way to find that in the morning.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: You may have to just get up a 15, 20 minutes earlier, but that's not a huge deficit to your sleep.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: But those 15 to 20 minutes every single morning in small chunks, those add up.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's how I would do it.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then when I got home at night again, I would take a 15, you know, sometimes half-hour chunk and get what I could get done, just prioritize what needed to be done in that timeframe.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: So sometimes that meant going out in the morning, actually picking the produce that I needed to then preserve later.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I'd pick it in the morning, get it in the house, throw it in the fridge, or leave it on the counter, depending on whatever it was.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then when I came home at night during dinner prep, I would prep that food and whatever man had needed to be done, cook dinner after dinner was done.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: Then I would actually do the food preservation work that needed to, or even vice versa.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: When I got home from work, um, oftentimes my husband and kids would go out and pick the beans, we'd snap them together, throw them in the fridge, and then I'd can them in the morning.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: So figuring out those packets of time or creating packets of time, but I think too often people hear four to five hours, they're like, I don't have that extra in a week.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: You do, you just have to break it down and prioritize.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: So it's kind of little, little things like that.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's during the summer months, however, like this time of a year, well, with the the cattle and the chickens and stuff, I'd say probably about half hour a day.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: And that's for 15 head of cattle, 20 chickens.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: And right now I have a bottle baby.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: So that has been increasing because I'm feeding a bottle to a newborn calf right now, three times a day.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: But on average, so it does vary by seasons.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: Winter is less.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, if you have a big snowstorm coming in, Joel, like your ice storm, you know, that that adds some complexity and you're gonna be out doing some more chores and that type of weather.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: But um, you know, my husband still works his full-time day job.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and I I do too, just in a different manner at home, um, with the you know, doing things like this.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so yes, so so I think this is in my experience, this is one of the this is the one of the biggest uh surprises to people uh is that it it's not marathons, it's uh it's daily little chunks.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we unfortunately we call those chores.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and chores have a have a like a negative connotation, right?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, chores don't sound like like a shindig or a party.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but uh uh those those minutes done um done uh um persistent faithfully, faithfully, um, you know, they add up.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, I've said it on this a million, and I keep saying it so everybody can understand it.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, right now, um the average American male between 25 and 35 years old.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is this is from the experts.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the average American male right now, 25 to 35 years old, spends 20 hours a week playing video games.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: So just let that sink in a minute.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: The average American male in their most virulent time of life, 25 to 35, spends 20 hours a week playing video games.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's average, average.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you could run four of Melissa's farms at that rate.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so when you start talking about five hours a week, you know, and and and 30 minutes a day, um uh there are very few people that couldn't squeeze, that couldn't find something that they're doing, you know, a Netflix series, TV watching, uh not listening to the Beyond Labels podcast.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, not that one.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: But hey, they they can listen to the podcast with earbuds while they plant the beans.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the cow, you know, or feed the hay.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um that that's uh there there is there is a place for technology in this.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um Cena, I know you want to ask a question, but before we leave, I definitely want Melissa to talk us about her uh through kind of her favorite uh preservation, uh preservation techniques.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what I wanted to introduce because you know we're talking about five hours a week or something, but for people getting into it, the hurdle, in my opinion, is getting started, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: It takes more hours to get started than to keep it going.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you have just released a book to help us get started in preserving the food.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Everything Worth Preserving: The Complete Guide for Food Preservation at Home.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: We have a link to this in the description box.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, if you just look at this table of contents, even someone like me, um, I do some preserving, but like canning.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: That one's a little intimidating to me.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: This book is user-friendly.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: You've got part one, part two, part three.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Part one is what you got to know and gather together before you begin.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Part two is different preservation methods, including tutorials where you have these beautiful colored pictures, step-by-step pictures.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the easiest how-to.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then part three is recipes.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I this is a fabulous resource.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: We encourage everyone to pick it up.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Melissa, go ahead and tell us about this wonderful book.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: So this is the book that I have always that I wanted when I got started because I grew up canning.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: My mom always canned and I always helped her.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I knew how to can and we used a deep freezer.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but that was really the only forms of food preservation that I knew from growing up.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: So when I started going down this route, you know, definitely we used a freezer, uh, cold storage, and canned a lot of the food.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then I started learning how to ferment and how to dehydrate and how to do, you know, salt, you know, because we can use salt, especially good real mineral salt to preserve our food and in manner of ways.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: But I also realized that there are things that can, if you don't do them correctly, can actually be harmful with food preservation, right?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it was, okay, how do I make sure I'm doing this safely, doing it well so that the food doesn't spoil.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like who wants to put all the work of growing it and preserving it only to go pull it off the shelf or out, you know, six months from now and it's right.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: And also that it was done in forms that we actually liked and ate.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: Because again, there's no point in doing food preservation if nobody likes that food or the way that it's preserved and your family won't eat it or does so very begrudgingly.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: So our food should be safe in all manners, even in food preservation, and it should taste way better than anything we're buying at the store.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: So those were kind of my criteria for setting out on this journey way, way back then.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really the accumulation of the book.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: But I also wanted something talking about being busy is when I wanted when I had 20 pounds of tomatoes sitting on the counter coming in, I wanted to a source where I could just flip to tomatoes.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: It tells me all the ways that I can safely preserve tomatoes and then gives me the recipes and/or the tutorial if I don't know how to do it.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I wanted that for all fruits and vegetables and meat because I don't have time to hunt and peck all over.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Bless the internet's heart.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: I love it for so many things.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: But I needed the resources right there in real time, and I didn't have to worry about ice storms or the power going out and in a hardback, hard copy physical format.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I couldn't find a book that had all of that in there.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so I wrote it.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're speaking to a guy, you're after my own heart.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm a book lover too, and you don't have you don't have to press an on button, you don't have to remember a passcode.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as you've got a candle, you can read it by any time of day, any time of of 24 hours.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, uh, I'm a hard cuppy lover, and you can you can see I'm a hard cuppy lover with the library behind me, which is only like you know, a third of or a quarter of my library.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so yeah, uh one wonderful resource, wonderful materials.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so we're we're gonna have to close down here, but I have one final question for you, and I think Cena's then gonna ask you about um about uh giving some publicity to our wellness to our um two days of truth summit.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: But um my my final question for you is so what do you still buy?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's the main thing you still buy?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I s well I still buy a lot of salt because I haven't figured out how to get that one myself.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and we do buy all like our flour and grain.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: So that's not something that I have really worked in our climate with.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: And if there's good sources out there for us, so for our grain use, um, all the different grains, I still purchase those and I still and sugar.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I do buy organic sugar to use and some of the preservings and that type of stuff.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_03: So basically, our our sweeteners, our grains, and definitely our salt, but most your fruits and vegetables and meat, um, we don't purchase any of that.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: So do you do we do you eat bananas and oranges?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's really interesting.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I rarely eat bananas.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody really in my household does either.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: And we don't eat a ton of citrus.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I think part of that is growing up, our grocery budget was really limited.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: Those aren't things that grow here.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so here because they won't grow.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then I ferment and freeze them for what uses I do have throughout the year for them.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: People who know me know that that's my biggest hypocrisy.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you know, uh the the I I for my first four years, we were in we were in Venezuela uh on a farm in Venezuela for my first year.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: We had we had pineapples, uh uh papayas, and bananas in the yard that we just had at the back door.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: You just grabbed one every time you went out.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think there's something, I just have an obsession with citrus.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think because I grew up for my first four years as a child, I grew up with this this citrus.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I and so I I'm I'm first to admit that, you know, yes, I am a local, you know, I love the bioregional, but man, oh man, I um I I get citrus and bananas.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just I just can't help it.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's it's it's great to it's great to to know that with you.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um Cena, you want to you want to uh sign us off here and we're really thankful, Melissa, that you took the time to be with us.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're grateful for your wealth of knowledge that you're teaching, you're sharing, and you're empowering people uh to you know to be able to go out and do things that they that they thought they couldn't do.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's one of the best gifts you can ever give to people.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so a long thank you to both of you guys because I feel I feel the same way listening to your stories and episodes.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: So it's wonderful to be in your ranks.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so, Melissa, as we go out, I've got one quick question for you.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, say there's somebody new to preserving, you know, that's listening to this, and they're they're hearing you say things like canning and stuff, and it's like, oh, oh, you know, all that pressure and stuff.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's that seems overwhelming.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Can you leave us with maybe a simple preservation technique that anybody could do right now with like maybe a freezer or something that most of us already have in our house, so that you can give an example of how simple preservation can actually be.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna even go even simpler.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you don't have a large freezer, a deep freezer is salt and your fresh leafy green herbs.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: So this can be celery leaves, this can be basil, could be thyme, could be oregano, anything like that.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Simply you're gonna do four poor four parts herb to one part salt.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: Grind them up together, put it in a jar or container, throw it in your fridge.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: When you're cooking, if a recipe calls for salt, like you're gonna make tomato soup, then just take your basil salt and put it in there.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: You don't you have to use any other salt.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we all know, like, or at least for me, like you dehydrate basil, it never tastes as good fresh, right?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like fresh basil, like you can dehydrate rosemary and it's still pretty pungent and still has good flavor.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: Basil, no, it's like such a disappointment dehydrate it.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: But when you do basil in the salt like that, it is like you're putting in fresh basil all year long, and it will stay with that salt in the fridge.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: It will on the shelf somewhat too, but if you're doing that high of a ratio, which is four parts herb to one part salt, um, you could have the potential for a little bit of mold growth if it's at room temperature.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: So just store it in the fridge and it condenses down.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're grinding it, it's just a little small jar.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_03: It will last you all year.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: It will stay fresh in the fridge all year, and it tastes just like fresh basil, because essentially it is.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my easy tip for any leafy green herb with salt.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's remarkable.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've never heard of that before, but I love basil, and that's one of the problems.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: It goes bad so quickly, you know, when it's fresh.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a great tip.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can find more tips like that in Melissa's new book, Everything Worth Preserving.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can also connect with her on her website, melissa knorris.com.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Melissa, it was a pleasure.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you all next week.